


Sour Nothings in his Ear

by TheVioletSunflower



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos Backstory, Flashbacks, Gen, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-09 23:10:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVioletSunflower/pseuds/TheVioletSunflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos visits the Whispering Forest to do science. He doesn't realize how hard its compliments will be to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sour Nothings in his Ear

Carlos parks his car at the edge of the wide expanse of trees on the edge of town. He is certain that those trees had not been there the last time he drove past this spot less than a week ago, and yet here they are, impossibly tall for their age of only a few days. He shakes his head at the utter strangeness of Night Vale.  
The Whispering Forest, Shauna had called it, and he trusts her professional opinion as the only botanist in town, although how she knew the name of a forest which had only just appeared he still isn't sure.  
Carlos steps out into the hot desert air, grabbing his bag of equipment from the seat beside him. He pulls a camera and magnifying glass from the bag and starts to examine the nearest tree.  
"You are so beautiful, Carlos!"  
The small voice in his ear makes him jump. He looks around. Nobody.  
But the voice continues. "Is that a new lab coat? It's very fetching. It really brings out your eyes."  
He turns and stares at the trees themselves. Could the voice possibly be coming from them?  
"You have beautiful eyes, Carlos, and your skin is such a nice colour!"

\---

"Hey, mexcrement!"  
Carlos rolled his eyes, but did not turn.  
"Hey," a strong hand gripped Carlos' shoulder and pinned him painfully against a bank of lockers. He kept his eyes stubbornly fixed on the floor until a second hand grabbed him by the hair, wrenching his neck back so there was nowhere he could look except into the eyes of his captor. "You look at me when I'm talking to you, you border-hopping creep. You hear?"  
Carlos winced at the slur. "I've told you before," he said in a voice he desperately hoped wasn't as shaky and uncertain as he felt. "My mother is from Guatemala, not Mexico. I was born here, and both me and my mother are in this country legally."  
This display of courage earned him a headache as the hand still tangled in his hair brought his head sharply against the locker. "Did I ask your opinion, roach?"  
Carlos said nothing.  
"Well, did I?" roared the hands pressing his back painfully into the lockers.  
"No."  
"That's right. Now you get your long-haired, black-eyed, Mexican't ass back to Mexico. Got it?"  
Guatemala, Carlos thought but didn't think it wise to say.  
One last leer and the grip on his hair and clothing was gone and he breathed again.

\---

"Your skin is so beautiful and smooth, Carlos. Do you use moisturizer?"  
No. Ugly. Skin and eyes too dark. Hair too long. Mexcrement.  
Carlos shakes his head. He is here to do science, not to think over painful memories of his past. He bends back over the root he had been looking at and looks through the magnifying glass.  
But the voice refuses to leave.  
"You're so nice, Carlos. I bet you'd make a great friend."

\---

"Now I want you to split off into pairs and practice this."  
Carlos turned his head towards his friend Simon sitting next to him on the gym floor, but Simon was already nodding at Jonathan across the room.  
Fine. That was okay. Simon and Jonathan had known each other longer after all. Carlos turned his attention to the girl on his other side, he thought her name might be Susan, but she just gave him a look of utter disgust and turned to smile at one of the other girls.  
Carlos looked around frantically at all his classmates, but everywhere he looked everyone already seemed to be paired off. Everyone had someone they would rather be with than him.  
"Well, Carlos," said the coach, "guess you're my partner."  
It was the third time this week.  
Carlos nodded and tried to look like he wasn't choking back tears.

\---

"You are such a good person, Carlos! Do you want to hang out? We should hang out more!"  
Now the trees are mocking him. Why would they want to hang out with him of all people?  
Carlos cuts a sample out of the tree's trunk with a bit more violence than is absolutely necessary. The voice doesn't seem to mind, though.  
"That was a very good sample!" it coos. "You're so good at science."

\---

The professor gave Carlos a sympathetic look while handing back last week's lab reports.  
He glanced at the mark on the top of the sheet and the number he saw there didn't register for a few minutes. When it did, he glanced over his paper but could find no mistakes in his pages worth of calculations.  
When everybody else had left, he approached the prof with the paper still clutched in his hand.  
"You didn't explain the experiment," he said, knowing his question before Carlos could even open his mouth.  
"What?"  
"You didn't say what you did to get your results. Without explanation of exactly what you did, the experiment cannot be repeated and your results, no matter how groundbreaking, are useless."  
"But a zero?"  
"That's what that report would be worth to any scientific journal of any merit whatsoever."  
Carlos bit his lip and nodded, not trusting his voice not to break. As he turned to leave, he heard his prof's voice call after him.  
"I'm sorry, Carlos. You're a smart boy, you just need to get better at putting that in writing."  
Carlos didn't acknowledge the compliment. He knew it wasn't true.

\---

"You're so smart. You're the best scientist we know."  
He isn't smart. He's a failure. Worst scientist in the world. How could everybody keep thinking he was good at this? He is nothing. A fraud.  
"We love you, Carlos."  
No you don't.  
"You are good, and you look good!"  
No I don't. Ugly. Stupid. Unlovable. Worthless.  
"Don't leave us, Carlos."  
He abandons his equipment and samples at the edge of the forest.  
There are tears in his eyes as he drives back to town.


End file.
